True Lies of a Drama Queen
Lee Nichols
Red Dress, Jun 2006, $13.95
ISBN: 0373895755

In Santa Barbara Intuitive Counselor (some would say phony phone psychic) Elle Medina is stunned when some diabolically clever depraved predators film her stripping in a dressing room; she is the current rage on the Internet. Outraged she plans her style of vengeance on these miscreants, but is unaware of whom the cameraman is, but does have a nagging suspicion as to the identity of the pervert.

Elle is more concerned that her best friend Maya is getting married to the right guy, but in the wedding gown from hell. She needs to take charge of the nuptials though she and Maya disagree on everything. Her own love life is okay as Merrick is a fine young man, but she worries that he is in Manhattan seeking a glamour queen and that he will learn she lies about graduate school and her profession even as she considers sharing an abode with him. What is a psychic who cannot see present and future and is unable to learn from her past mistakes do? She starts with eluding her houseguest, the groom's sexy sibling and keeping away from the wedding Rabbi who wants her, but after that who knows because as everyone knows, nobody could truly predict the future.

As with her first appearance (see TALES OF A DRAMA QUEEN), Elle's latest tale is all over the place, but ultimately ties together through the wedding. The chick lit story line has the phony psychic in a panic over the Internet strip, the wedding, and her relationship with Merrick as readers follow the latest capers of the flawed screwball Elle.

Harriet Klausner